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by 
George Pattullo 



Copyright by the 
Curtis Publishing 
Company, 1917 



Reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, 
Philadelphia 



3547 



"A TEVER were the peoples of 
_L V Canada and the United 
States brought together so closely 
as now, and the message we think 
most appropriate at this season is 
a reprint of an excellent article in 
The Saturday Evening Post of 
Philadelphia, which testifies to the 
splendid courage, endurance and 
fighting abilities of our Canadian 
soldiers who have clothed the term 
CANADIAN with undying glory. 

C. B. FOSTER C. E. McPHERSON 

Assistant Passenger Assistant Passenger 

Traffic Manager Traffic Manager 

Montreal Winnipeg 

C. E. E. USSHER G. M. BOSWORTH 

Passenger Traffic Manager Vice-President in charge 

Montreal of Traffic, Montreal 

CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY 
CHRISTMAS, 1917 



TBAHSFEBRED FOO^ 

'■. ddical 'Qmvm 

?JV 2? ISJ3 




CANADIAN WAR RECORDS 

Canadians Returning Victorious from Battle of Courcelette 




HEN I was a boy in Canada we used to regard Englishmen 
as superior beings. Their attitude always admitted 
that they were, and we accepted it. To them we were 
" Colonials." But to-day the English look upon 
Canadians as superior beings ; and all is as it should be. 
What wrought the change ? The war has accomplished many upsets 
and reversals of sentiment, and this is not the least of them. To the 
overseas forces is due the credit. No finer fighting men can be found 
in the battle lines. 

In common with a large portion of the American public I long 
harbored a suspicion that the publicity our friends to the north of us 
were receiving for their achievements in France might possibly be 
explained on the ground of propaganda. That was doing them an 
injustice. Though certain crack British regiments are unsurpassed 
by any troops in the world, the fact remains that the Canadian Army 
as a whole constitutes the most formidable weapon of its size on any 
Front. This statement does not represent my valueless personal 
prejudices, but the opinion of military experts. 

The Canadians are always there with the punch. No matter 
how badly mauled they may be they come back with a kick like a 
Missouri mule — and you may have noticed how often when there's 
a particularly hard nut to crack they get the job. 

Even the enemy tacitly confesses their worth. After torrents 
of rain had temporarily halted the attack on Lens in August, German 
military correspondents wrote gleefully to their newspapers: "Sir 
Douglas Haig has discovered that even his Canadians are not the 
equal of the German soldiers." 



Page Three 



Fi g h t in' S o n s - of - G u n s 




BUT while we are handing bouquets to the sons of the Maple 
Leaf, let us not lose sight of the fact that the Canadian forces 
include Englishmen, Scotchmen and some Irishmen, born in the 
Old Land, who were living in the Dominion when war broke out and 
promptly enlisted. That type of man is always to the fore in a crisis. 
The same pluck and push that drive him to emigrate to new fields 
bring him into the ranks at his country's first call. 

Canada's Splendid Contribution 
to the British Army 

Should you ask an Englishman what percentage of the Canadian 
Army is made up of men born in the British Isles, he will tell you 
" About ninety." Ask a native Canadian, and his reply will be 
" Probably twenty." My information is that sixty-five per cent of 
the first division were born in the British Isles ; and not far from 
fifty per cent of those who came later claimed the same origin. 

Neither should the Americans among the expeditionary armies 
be overlooked. They have thousands and thousands of them, of 
the Anglo-Saxon strain — either men who emigrated to the United 
States from Great Britain and Canada years ago or adventurous 
spirits of American parentage who wanted to take part in the Big 
Show. I met with hundreds such in a small sector of the Front 
early in September. 

"Hey, wait a minute! Where you from? Put it there! 
I'm from Ohio." Then, raising his voice to a bellow: "Say, 
Charlie! Oh, Charlie! Come 'ere. This guy is from God's 
country too." 

The pedigree of one of them ran like this : Father, Irish; mother, 
Swede ; born in the United States ; a citizen of Chile when war broke 
out. Now he's wearing the uniform of His Majesty George V. 

And there was Jim Games, whom I ran across at the foot of 
Vimy Ridge — he used to punch cows with the O. R. outfit in Arizona. 
But Games is in a Hieland regiment now, and a sergeant at that. 
If Sherman Rinehart, his old boss, could see Jim in kilts, he'd just 
naturally crawl off into a doghole and never come out. 

Such are the surprises you get among the personnel of the 
Canadians. But what earthly difference does it make whence they 
come ? They're all of the same staunch breed. English-born or 
Canadian-born, it is the same ; for if a native Canadian isn't as much 
of a Britisher as a man born in the British Isles, then the Empire 
means nothing. But he is ; he's just as British as a Texan is American" 
He may differ from the Englishman in accent and viewpoint, of course ; 
but the underlying qualities of both are identical — steadfast courage, 
tenacity and unbeatable perseverance under punishment. 



Page Four 



Fi g h t i n' S o n s - of - Gun s 



The One Thing that Americans 
Are Slow to Learn 

T TOWEVER, there is a point of departure: The Canadian excels 
•*• -*-in initiative, new ideas and rapidity of action. Those are the 
products of his environment and social system, and they have 
played a tremendous part in his success in war. Because those are 
also American characteristics his achievements hold a peculiar inter- 
est for us, on the threshold of trial. More nearly than any others the 
soldiers of Canada approximate ours in habits of everyday life and 
thought, in their civilian training and methods of work. Therefore 
we should be able to draw useful deductions from their experiences 
and present efficiency. 

The hardest thing for Young America to learn is discipline. But 
the Canadians have acquired it, and it was foreign to their natures as 
it is to ours. At the outset of the war their contempt for military 
formalities and restrictions became proverbial; they provided the 
merriest quips that came out of England. All kinds of stories made 
the rounds. One of the favorites concerned a recruit who was stopped 
in a London street by a colonel for having failed to salute. The 
colonel was a staff officer and a martinet — a proud beauty in crimson 
bands and gold. 

"Don't you know what to do when you see an officer?" he 
stormed, and for a full five minutes he harangued the rookie on 
discipline. The Canadian listened sheepishly. 

" Stand at attention! " ordered the colonel, in intense exaspera- 
tion, "and take that grin off your face! You're a soldier now, 
remember — so try to act like one!" 

" Yes, sir." 

" What's the matter with you, anyway ? Do you drink ? " 

The recruit looked relieved, and immediately relaxed. " Well, 
I don't mind splitting a bottle with you, colonel," he said affably. 

Perhaps that hit off Canadian discipline when they first enrolled ; 
two-fisted, upstanding men never take readily to blind obedience. 
But it would be a rank libel now. To-day, while there may be more 
subservience in other troops, there is no sterner discipline in the 
Allied armies than among the Canadians. 

The Superb Spirit 
of the Canadians 

TTERE is an incident that occurred not long ago at the First Cana- 
•*" •*■ dian Infantry Base Depot in France. Sentries patrol all over 
the place and their orders are strict. On a dark night a couple of 
generals arrived from corps headquarters and started to make their 
way through the lines. 




Page Five 



F i ght i n ' S o n s - of - G un s 



"Halt! Who goes there?" a sentry challenged. They were 
not twenty feet from him, but he bellowed it as though they were on 
the other side of the English Channel. 

" Friend." 

"Advance — one!" came the command, which meant that he 
expected them to come forward singly. 

Doubtless the two generals did not take the order literally, for 
they both stepped forward. 

"Advance — one — I said!" thundered the sentry, and down 
came his bayonet. 

The senior officer laughed and went closer. 

" I am Major General " he announced. 

Well sir, the sentry couldn't have been less impressed had he 
said he was Buck Jones, of Bond's Corners. Orders were orders to 
him. 

" Open your coat for identification," he said brusquely, and the 
major general was obliged to prove his rank. 

At this same base not an arrest was necessary for breach of 
discipline in a period of forty-three days, though nearly fifteen hundred 
men were in camp. 

The Canadians at the Front shave every day. Let that sink in. 
Right up there in the trenches — often ankle-deep in mud, sleeping 
in funk holes, each man cooking his own meals, fighting lice and 
rats and Boches, with everything combined to break down habits of 
cleanliness — they rigidly observe the rule for smooth faces and chins. 
Of all I saw, that hit me hardest, because it meant so much. 

It is a general order throughout the British Army that each man 
shall keep cleanly shaved when possible. Of course obedience to 
the strict letter of the order varies with the different regiments ; 
it depends largely on the officer commanding. But there are many 
battalions that adhere to it strictly except in the heat of attack. 
A company officer told me that his own men shaved daily even while 
occupying some captured shell holes before new trenches had been 
dug. 

I was with a kiltie battalion which had been at the Front thirty- 
eight days. That is more than double the usual limit of a " tour," 
and the men were worn out. Their losses had been considerable ; 
nightly the tally grew. The nervous tension in holding the Front is 
terrific. But the Jocks were cleaner shaved than some regiments of 
our own that I have seen occupying comfortable billets, with every 
facility for keeping spick-and-span. 

You will readily discern the motive in all this. Regular shaving 
is the next best thing to complete cleanliness. It freshens a man, 



Page Six 



Fight in' Sons-of-Guns 



helps to sustain his pride and self-respect ; and where bathing is 
impossible and a real wash cannot be had the razor acts as a tonic . 
Permit soldiers to grow slovenly and lax and you will soon have them 
downhearted. Make them shave and they buck up. It aids morale. 
It is all a part of the scheme of discipline. 

The same idea is back of everything in their organization. A lay- 
man would naturally suppose that cleaning harness and washing 
muddied wagons and limbers after a night out was sheer waste of 
effort, when the same harness and wagons and limbers were due to 
do the job again immediately. But the Canadians don't look at it 
in that light ; they know that if you ever let down you begin to slip. 

The transport lines of one brigade were close to the Vimy Ridge. 
It had been raining for days — there were regular downpours through 
the month of August — and mud was everywhere. Wagons and 
limbers and horses had been out the night before, carrying stuff to 
the Front, and they returned plastered with muck. Yet by nine 
o'clock next morning every buckle and wheel was gleaming. They 
cleaned and oiled the leather, polished the mountings, made the 
wagons fit for a review, groomed the horses until their coats shone. 
And they were billed for another night in the rain and slime! You 
can't beat that spirit. 

" This war is eighty per cent spirit and twenty per cent technical, 
anyway," declared a veteran colonel. " I don't believe in holding 
troops too long in training before you send them in. There's a 
danger of their going stale. What's the idea in drilling the Americans 
until they're letter-perfect ? A lot of the stuff they learn will be out 
of date before they have finished. They're developing new methods 
every month and junking the old — you can see it all round you. 
Why, we have schools to which officers are being sent who've seen 
two years service over here ! That shows you how methods change. 

" If they've got discipline they have about all they can acquire 
except through experience. Get that into them, and then turn them 
loose against the Boches. They'll do the rest. Spirit is the thing. 
They may get it in the neck at the outset — Heine will probably spring 
one of his sweet surprises ; but once they've been blooded they'll 
hammer hell out of him. Certainly they will. I know your men. 
They're a good deal like ours." 

The spirit of the Canadians is superb. Of course they hate the 
whole foul, insane business — but they will keep on fighting until the 
cows come home. After three years of war they are more resolute 
to win than the day they went in, for they have borne terrible losses 
and they will not see those losses go for nothing. Curiously enough 
the more recent additions to their army are less cheerful than the 
men who have been at it since the start. This is made evident by 




Page Seven 



Fight in' Sons -of -Guns 



their letters home. What the explanation may be I don't know ; 
probably the newer men's spirits will improve with hardening. But 
Canadian confidence cannot be shaken. They don't brag that the 
Boches will be beaten before such and such a date ; they have a whole- 
some respect for the marvelous organization back of Fritz. What 
they do say, however, is this: " We've got the edge on him. Man 
for man, we can lick Fritz any old time, and anywhere. And he 
knows it." 

Pride of race surges high in them. They feel as never before 
the superiority of their Anglo Saxon to the Teutonic strain. And the 
beauty of it is that they have proved it on the Boche's hide, not once 
but a dozen times. When attackers and counter-attackers came 
together in No Man's Land in the August assault on Lens, and it 
was body to body, with life for the better man as stakes, which side 
triumphed ? The Canadians cleaned up with them. 

Back of the indomitable spirit of the men is the spirit of the 
women of Canada. To the majority of them, more especially among 
the well-to-do classes, this is a sacred cause for which no sacrifice 
is too great. They have a very high sense of duty. In a crisis it 
becomes the dominating motive of their fives, and so they give up 
husbands and sons and brothers and sweethearts with heroic forti- 
tude. By jingo, they make them go sometimes ! The attitude of 
Canadian women toward slackers and the moral pressure they brought 
to bear on them were quite as good as conscription. 

An artillery officer explained the psychology of the German 
courage thus : 

" Take a hundred Heines out of one of their best divisions 
and they're as good as a hundred of ours. But take three Heines 
and they're not so good as one of ours. Huh ? Search me — I can't 
tell you the reason, but that's the way they fight. They've got to 
have the feel of the touch before they will stand up to it. As soon 
as you make him depend on himself, instead of on mass work, he goes 
to pieces." 

That has been sufficiently evidenced by innumerable captures of 
detached parties of Boches by greatly inferior numbers of British — 
often by a single soldier. The fact that some exceptions must be 
noted of Heines belonging to certain storm battalions, who have given 
proof of dauntless individual courage, merely emphasizes the rule. 
" The feel of the touch " seems essential to them. 

" Remember!" barked a drill sergeant at Number One British 
Training Camp in France, as his men got ready to go over the top in 
a practice charge — " remember — you've a better man than the 
Boche any day !" 

And then they went to it. They weren't the least self-conscious. 



Page Eight 



F i g h t i n ' S o n s - of - G un s 



The yells they emitted were not the half hearted trebles of a bunch 
of supers in a Shakespearian play ; they charged across into the 
next trench with the viciousness of a real attack, and they drove the 
bayonet home with savage strength. It was precisely as though the 
bag were a foe they hated. 



Methods That Bring Home 
the Bacon 

NEVER have I seen such ferocity in training. The instructors 
worked with the intensity of maniacs ; they fairly foamed at 
the mouth to get the right punch into it. Hoarse and dripping 
perspiration, they stormed up and down driving, cajoling, fuming, 
cursing prayerfully. If a man was awkward with the bayonet they 
grabbed his rifle to show him how ; another charged alone at the 
dummies to illustrate the venom that ought to go into sticking an 
enemy. It was top- speed work, driven by human dynamos of energy ; 
the men were red and eager, up on their toes with the zest of it. 

Now those are the methods that always bring home the bacon. 
Whether it be football, prizefighting or war, hard, rough training 
turns out the champions. I have watched the work in our own camps, 
both at home and in France, and I would respectfully recommend this 
British ferocity. 

The soldiers in Number One were not veterans. They had 
received from three to six months' drill at home, and the finishing 
touches were being put on before they went into the line. All 
reinforcements get nine days' polishing in such camps in France 
prior to going to the Front. If they can get this spirit so quickly, so 
should our men of the draft. Another significant feature of their 
training, which tells the way the war is going, is that the Canadians 
concentrate on offensive tactics. They scarcely bother with defensive 
at all. That is a complete reversal from two years ago. Evidently 
they figure that the job ahead of them is pushing back the Boche, 
without let-up and without retreat. You can see it in the construction 
of their trenches. They never build now for long occupation, and 
the secondary lines are always patently a precaution which they don't 
expect to use. Of course these lines are dug in order to provide for 
every possible contingency, but their character clearly reveals the 
expectation that they will not be needed. All of which is mighty 
heartening. 

What the heart is to the body so is the organization behind 
the lines to an army. There's no valvular leak or weakness in the 
Canadian heart ; it is often asserted that no better organization 
exists in the Allied forces. 




Page Nine 



F i g ht in' S o n s - of - G un s 



To begin with, the troops are remarkably well fed. Their 
rations include fresh meat, bully beef, onions, bacon, pork and 
beans, bread, biscuits, jam, cheese, tea, sugar, milk and cocoa. 
They total about five pounds a day per man — which is the allowance 
made for our army, also. The extras consist of rice in lieu of bread, 
sauces, figs, dates, prunes and dried fruit. 

Here is the ration allowance for each soldier : One pound of 
meat ; a pound of bread ; four ounces of bacon ; eight ounces of fresh 
vegetables or two ounces of dried ; two ounces of jam — one tin to 
six men ; two ounces of butter— three times a week ; three ounces 
of cheese every day ; three ounces of sugar ; two ounces of salt ; one 
ounce of condensed milk ; mustard, pepper and lime juice ; two 
ounces of tobacco per week, which figures out at two packages of 
cigarettes, or thereabouts. There is no charge for the tobacco. 

They also issue to each man one -sixty -fourth of a gallon of 
rum every day. I heard an argument between the padre of a High- 
land battalion and a youthful transport officer concerning this. 

"Why, it's the greatest thing ever!" declared the youngster. 
" When the boys get that scoot of rum under their belts they just 
up with their kilts and go down the road looking for Heine." 

" Hoot, mon ! " remonstrated the padre. " Dutch courage! " 

" Uh-uh, padre! Good old Scotch." 

The men in the line receive one-eighth of an ounce of tea and 
three-fourths of an ounce of sugar extra. The pork-and-bean 
issue, which is supposed to be part of the fresh-meat ration, is 
actually issued in excess at least four times a week — one tin to two 
men. In addition, they get regular rations of a sort of stew, made 
out of meat and vegetables and put up in cans. 

Giants on Bantam Rations 

THE cold truth is that the soldiers live far better than the 
civilian population. Men in the front trenches get real food — the 
kind that sticks to your ribs. So far as meals go I'd trade the 
best you can buy in Paris and London hotels for their chow; you 
simply cannot get their substantial fare in the cities of France and 
England. And nobody ought to kick at that. 

The rations must usually be sent up cold to the first line, where 
each man prepares his own food He has what is known as a 
Tommy-cooker — an ordinary pork-and-bean tin with the top flared. 
Inside is a piece of sacking, covered with the drippings from fresh 
meat. This will burn five hours, and the men use it to warm up 
the meat or bacon sent up already cooked, to make tea, to toast 
their bread. 



Page Ten 



F i g h t in' S o n s - of - G un s 




JkJA" 



CANADIAN WAR RECORDS 

Canadian Tommies going into an attack ready to dig themselves in 

At their base depots the Canadian enjoy four meals a day. 
They take afternoon tea ! That will sound odd to Americans, but 
after you have been over here a while, working like a levee nigger 
on the training ground, that extra touch of nourishment will appeal 
to you. It seems to put new life into the men. 

Here is a day's menu, picked at random, at the First Canadian 
Infantry Base Depot. It was for Thursday, August sixteenth: 

Breakfast. Bread, fried ham, bacon, jam, tea. 

Dinner. Biscuits, roast mutton with brown gravy, boiled 
mutton with onion sauce, potatoes, bread pudding and custard. 

Tea. Bread and butter, cheese, sliced beef, pickles, tea. 

Supper. Cocoa, bread, jam, biscuits, cheese, tea. 

While on the subject of rations I feel it a solemn duty to make 
a plea for fair play. They have a tug-of-war team among the 
Canadians which has not only beaten every team from the Allied 
armies put up against it, but not long ago took on sixteen, then 
twenty, then twenty-four picked French soldiers and pulled them 
round a mile or two of scenery. They did that just to show what 
was possible to Scotchmen. 

Now these Jocks have to use the hay scales. The baby of 
them all, who is about seven feet high and built like a freight car, 
goes round mourning his lack of size. His life is saddened by the 
knowledge that he weighs only two hundred and twenty-five pounds. 
" You ought to see the others," he says in apology. Yet he receives 



Page Eleven 



Fight in' Sons-of-Guns 




precisely the same ration as a little cock sparrow of a man who tips 
the scales round a hundred and thirty. Yes, sir; one of those giants 
gets no more to eat than a bantam. 

Something ought to be done about this. Cannot the Canadian 
Parliament pass an act, or make some special appropriations, for 
extra chow ? 

The kilties nurse a jealous pride of their uniform. Put them 
into breeks and you would largely destroy their esprit de corps. 
As kilties they have a high reputation to sustain; they know it to 
the marrow of their bones, and they're holy terrors in a fight. It is 
reported that the Boches call them the Ladies of Hell. That may be 
merely picturesque stuff, like so much that is printed on both sides, 
but it is certain that Heine has taken a dislike to kilts. Ah, mon, 
when he hears the skir-r-1 of the pipes in Wilhelmstrasse, he'll nae 
longer wunner why he was lickit. 

Ancient Heroes Put to Shame 

DISTINCTIVE uniforms play an important role in the British 
forces. Regiments win them by their valor, and ever after 
strive to do them credit. So men take kindly to them. Look how 
hard our own marines balk at the regulation khaki. 

The Canadians are of all ages, ranging from the teens up to the 
late forties. I asked a score of regimental and company commanders 
which made the better soldiers for trench warfare, the boys or the 
mature men. The replies varied widely. 

An artillery officer insisted that soldiers below twenty-five 
couldn't stand the gaff, that they broke physically and mentally 
under the strain of this rat-pit death grapple. He was of opinion 
that neither their physical fibre nor their nervous organism had reached 
the requisite development. 

" Give me men between thirty and thirty- six," he said. " They 
don't break like the youngsters." 

" On the other hand, don't the youngsters come back quicker ?" 

" Perhaps they do. But they break too fast. They can't stand 
the strain like the older chaps. And the older ones are more 
dependable — I mean you can count on their doing what they're 
ordered, every time." 

To offset this, an infantry colonel of wide experience declared 
that he would choose men between the ages of twenty-three and 
twenty-seven. At that stage of life they not only pick up training 
readily but they can stand the strain, he said, for they are fully 
developed and toughened and possess the recuperative powers of 
youth. 



Page Twelve 



Fight in' Sons- of -Guns 



" That is, speaking broadly, of course," he added. " Often a 
boy of nineteen or twenty makes the best soldier of all. It depends 
on his stamina and temperament." 

The preponderance of the opinion I gathered was in favor of the 
man between twenty-four and twenty- eight. 

Heroism has been of such daily occurrence in all the Allied 
armies that its recital has lost the old thrill. How we used to tingle 
to the windy deeds of the heroes of antiquity ! Dig up those school 
tales now, put them side by side with the gallant acts that are being 
done on every Front, and the best press-agent stuff those doughty 
ancients could contrive will provoke howls of derision. There has never 
been an era of such dauntless bravery and sacrifice. 

Achilles was a fatuous fathead compared to young Capt. W. A. 
Bishop, for example — the Ontario aviator. They say he carries a 
silk stocking on his machine for luck. And the King hung enough 
decorations on him to stock a jewelry store. The official record of the 
exploit by which he won the Victoria Cross, the highest reward for 
valor, was that he flew first to an enemy aerodrome, but, finding 
nobody round to fight, proceeded to another about three miles south- 
east, which was a good twelve miles the other side of the line. 

Seven Boche machines, with engines running, were on the 
ground. Down he swooped and attacked from a height of no more 
than fifty feet. He dropped one of their mechanics. A machine 
rose to attack him, but Bishop poured in fifteen rounds at close range 
and it crashed to earth. 

A second got off the ground. This he met with thirty rounds and 
it went out of business into a tree. And now two more soared to 
meet him. The Canadian engaged one at a height of a thousand feet 
and sent it hurtling down; after which he emptied a whole drum 
into the other and returned cheerily to his station. 

And they have a major who descended into a German strong- 
hold alone and captured more than a hundred, singlehanded. A 
few of his men who were waiting above picked off the first twelve 
Boches who climbed up the steps in obedience to the major's com- 
mand, but that was solely because they hadn't grasped the idea. 
They didn't fully realize at the moment that the ascending Heines 
were the vanguard of the major's prisoners. He, too, wears the V.C. 

A non-commissioned officer deliberately gave his life to blow up 
a German mine and bury the Boches whom he surprised there. 
A monument on Vimy commemorates his heroism. 

Sergeant M was guiding ten wagons containing trench 

mortar bombs to the dumps in Loos on July eighteenth. He and 
the lead driver were wounded by enemy shelling. Though hit in 




Page Thirteen 



F i g h t i n ' Sons-of-Guns 



three places the sergeant took his wagons to safety, carried the 
injured driver out of danger, and bandaged his wounds prior to attend- 
ing to his own. 

Lieutenant M , at Fresnoy, not only showed gallantry in 

obtaining his objective by routing an enemy three times his numbers, 
but consolidated his position and beat off two counter attacks ; 
then, discovering that all the officers of the company on his left had 
become casualties, he went over and took command and beat off a 
furious Boche assault. 

Lieutenant W , while the enemy was shelling his battalion 

front-line trench southwest of Acheville on the night of June eighth- 
ninth, was wounded in the arm and shoulder. He started down the 
trench to have his wounds dressed and came upon two of his platoon 
buried by a shell explosion. Though the trench was still being shelled 
and he was suffering tortures, Lieutenant W dug them out. 

Foolhardiness Discouraged 

SERGEANT A , on May fourth, in the Arleux Loop, volunteered 
with six others to go to Willerval to fill up empty water cans, the 
water supply having been exhausted. They crossed a mile in the 
open under heavy fire, filled the cans while the village was being 
bombarded, and returned to battalion headquarters with them. 
Then they volunteered to take the water to the front lines. " This 
gallant act was done in the open under very heavy enemy shelling 
and rifle fire." 

Those are merely a few; the more spectacular are familiar to 
you through the newspapers ; the above reveal the variety of the 
hazards men will fearlessly undertake in the performance of duty. 
Bringing in wounded under fire ; extinguishing blazes of camouflage 
over ammunition dumps ; carrying on when wounded three or four 
times ; sticking to their ammunition wagons after they had been set 
afire, and putting out the flames ; such are ordinary feats of individual 
daring during a show. 

A runner staggered on with a message after his arm had been 
blown off; he was terribly wounded again, and unconscious for a 
while ; but he revived, delivered the message and died. 

A noteworthy feature of their heroism is that it has always a 
purpose, a military or humanitarian value. The Canadians don't go 
in for deadly perils just to show their pluck. They never play to the 
gallery. Unless something can be accomplished by taking risks they 
avoid them to preserve life and limb. 

Foolhardy exposure to danger is punishable, in fact ; and the 
explanation is simple : The man who tries to show how brave he is 



Page Fourteen 



Fi g ht in ' S o n s - of - G un s 



doesn't merely imperil his own life ; in nine cases out of ten he will 
start something. Besides getting killed he may stir the Boche into 
shelling positions he would otherwise leave alone, thereby causing 
losses or spoiling the job of working parties. 

The same applies to carelessness. To illustrate how careful a 
greenhorn should be : 

Early in September three of us ascended a bare hill in order to 
get a better look at the Boche lines which lay below. It was a per- 
fectly quiet part of the Front and seemed wholly free from the pos- 
sibility of trouble. Otherwise I should not have been in the vicinity. 
There was nothing on the hill except some thousands of holes and 
craters and tangled masses of wire. We lay in one of the craters 
a while, looking over at the German positions and listening to the 
screech of the shells crossinghigh above, for the Boche was strafing 
some concrete gun emplacements far back, which he had been com- 
pelled to abandon weeks before. Possibly he thought they were 
being used by the Canadians. 

Pretty soon a whizz-bang burst some distance to our left. A mat- 
ter of a hundred yards makes all the difference in the world, since it 
means that another target is being fired at, so we paid no attention. 
But presently another burst nearer ; then one close on our right ; and 
one behind. I say behind because I had left those parts, headed 
for Paris, or preferably for the south coast if I could hold out. Thank 
heaven, my legs remained loyal ! Craters and barbed wire were 
everywhere, which made speed difficult ; it was mere luck in missing 
the wire that I escaped being torn to shreds. However, I was first 



Painting Paris Red 

BEFORE we reached a place of safety the Boche had dropped ten 
whizz -bang s round the summit . After that we lay low and watched . 
He proceeded to shell the hill for an hour. Had there been artillery 
concealed there, or an o-pip, or working parties, they would have 
suffered for it. As it was he simply wasted ammunition. 

The incident is mentioned merely for the lesson it carries. When 
you get to the Front lay low except when you are ordered to take a 
chance or when something of definite value can be accomplished by 
the venture. 

A former Toronto University athlete was asked how he felt and 
how his platoon behaved just before a charge. Instead of going 
into an analysis he contented himself with a terse statement of 
symptoms. He said they were precisely the same as those afflicting 
a football team before the big game of the year. 



Page Fifteen 



F i g h t in' S o n s - o f - G un s 




A lot of good people in London and Paris prate about the way 
soldiers behave when on leave from the Front. Let us consider the 
thing impartially. Put yourself in their place. Stick it out amid 
muck and rain for five or six months at a stretch ; live in underground 
burrows with the lice and the rats ; work like a coolie ; listen to the 
screech and cr-r-ump of shells day and night through the interminable 
weeks ; see your pals wiped out before your very eyes, knowing all the 
while that next minute you may get yours ; bear wind and rain and 
cold, keeping cheerful as may be and as clean as you can — do all that, 
and when you reach the big city, where warm life beckons, would 
you feel like heading for a tea shop or for a game of croquet with the 
old gentlemen in the Luxembourg Gardens ? 

I trow not ! If you have been red-blooded enough to play your 
part like a man up there you'll be red-blooded enough to seek the 
sort of " time " hardy men go in for the world over when long denied 
the comforts of civilization. It is the psychology of the cow outfit 
when it hits town, but intensified to the nth degree because of the 
added horrors. The average man on leave wants to forget the whole 
sickening business. 

" I may be dead to-morrow — so here goes!" is about the way 
he reasons. 

That does not represent the highest viewpoint, but one can 
sympathize with it. Far be it from me to feel censorious when they 
cut loose. On the contrary, whenever I see a bunch of husky 
Canadians careening along the Boulevard des Italiens in a taxicab, 
lifting up their voices in song, I want to step out to the curb and yell 
" Go to it, ol' settlers !" 

All that sort of thing is one of the terrible penalties we have to 
pay. War breaks down moral fibre. A lot of nonsense has been 
talked about its refining influence — how people emerge from it the 
purer for sacrifice. Most of this mush has been contributed by 
scholarly divines and such, who see the world through the mists of 
their own emotions. There may be a few white souls here and there 
whose flame burns brighter under the awful stress ; there may be 
people far removed from contact with the armies engaged, who feel 
themselves purged through the spirit of consecration. But it isn't 
so among the masses of men who do the fighting. It isn't so among 
the nations they contact. 

Nobody with his eyes open can fail to see that war is a throwback, 
a reversion to the primitive. The wretched business has affected 
our mental processes for the worse also. Childish arguments, cheap 
claptrap, and appeals that would have provoked hoots from an average 
American audience four years ago now possess the power to stir us 
to frenzy. 



Page Sixteen 



Fi g ht in' Sons- of- Guns 



Watch the men of every nation that has been long in this fight 
and you will note how their standards of morality have suffered. 
You don't have to hunt far for convincing evidence ; it is all round you 
in Europe. And we shall go through the same fire ; before this war 
is much older we shall be singed too. Which is another item in the 
dreadful bill we shall have against the Boche. 

The Canadian command recognizes that a considerable proportion 
of its men who succumb to dissipation on leave do so for lack of other 
diversions. Harpies and the temptations booze offers waylay them 
from the moment they step off the train in town. Ten per cent of 
those who get Paris-leave pay for it bitterly afterward. 

Efforts are being made to organize counter attractions. They will 
have adequate clubrooms and amusements, and there will be officials 
always on hand to steer them toward healthier pursuits. And such 
close restrictions will be placed upon preying women that their 
activities will be greatly curtailed. It will be impossible for them to 
grab a man as soon as he steps off a train, for instance. The 
Americans are already organizing on a big scale to cope with this 
problem as it will apply to our army. 

Usually the soldier comes well provided with money for a ten-day 
jaunt. The Canadian system is to hold back the bulk of his pay and 
encourage him to save; but he draws six hundred francs to go to 
town. Many have more than that, being in receipt of money from 
home sources. I met a private in Paris who had spent two thousand 
francs in four days, or close to a hundred dollars a day. Another 
had arrived with fifteen hundred francs a couple of days previously 
and was sadly employed in counting what was left while awaiting 
his turn in a barber shop. 

"Gosh!" he said, "I've spent seven hundred and eighty 
francs already. Talk about the high cost of living!" 

Civilians in High Command 

F they want to turn loose money at that rate it is their own affair, 
for men never earned it harder. But they could have any sort 
of time they desired on a mere fraction of what they spend. 

Canada does well by her soldiers. Their pay of one dollar and 
ten cents a day works out about the same as our own, but each 
private with a family or dependents must assign at least half his pay 
to them. The separation .allowance is twenty dollars a month in the 
case of a wife with as many as three children. The Patriotic Fund, 
incorporated in 1914 and supported by private and public contribu- 
tion, allows each family of a soldier from five to thirty dollars a 
month. The minimum goes to a wife without children. In many 



I 



Page Seventeen 



F i ght in' Sons-of- Guns 



localities the civil authorities or municipalities pay the full premium 
on soldiers' insurance, thereby protecting their dependents. The 
amount of the policy, when realized, is paid to the family at the rate 
of thirty dollars a month. 

The Canadians have the same initiative that is our boast. It has 
shown itself in hundreds of ways, both in organization and fighting. 
The huts they use in France were invented by a Canadian. Night 
raids originated with them, and nothing has contributed more to 
worry the Boche. He never knows at what hour a bunch of the 
accursed enemy from overseas will suddenly pile into his trenches, 
bombing or bayoneting, and he cannot sleep well for thinking about it. 
Night raids have done much to destroy his morale. 

When dark comes the Canadians are usually treated to a display 
of fireworks that makes the Toronto Exhibition seem tame. Panic 
hits Heine in gusts. Everything will be black as a wolf's mouth for 
hours — then up goes a rocket — and next moment the heavens are 
ablaze with his flares. The Canadians watch with delight, chuckling 
because they have " got his wind up." And their own lines remain 
dark as a tomb, sinister, threatening. 

They have brought horse sense to the solution of military prob- 
lems, and business ability into organization. It took men from civilian 
life to put the requisite ginger into their little army of regulars, which 
has been completely engulfed by the citizen armies. That has 
always been the history of great wars. In our own case the most 
efficient of our regulars will go to the top, the incompetents will be 
shaken down and men from business and the professions will step 
up to take their places. The Canadian corps commander in France 
was formerly a real-estate man on the Pacific Coast — not such 
a bad training for grabbing ground, at that. Among their major 
generals and brigadiers are newspaper editors, lawyers, manufac- 
turers, millers and heads of business concerns. 

It is curious how little one hears of the part the engineers play 
in this war. One of the reasons may be that their work is not of the 
spectacular kind ; but probably the limitations imposed by the censor- 
ship have more to do with it. 

An important part of the engineers' job is to keep the troops 
supplied with water. They build canvas reservoirs, skillfully con- 
cealed by camouflage, some with a capacity in excess of sixty thousand 
gallons ; they develop wells and springs, and run pipe lines — always 
figuring to be in advance of the army's progress, so that when a new 
attack has won some enemy ground there will be water in plenty for 
men and horses. 

Their narrow-gauge railroads are frequently pushed forward 
under murderous shelling, and day in, day out, at full noon and in 



Page Eighteen 



Fight in' Sons -of- Guns 




CANADIAN WAR RECORDS 

Lorries in one of the Great Ammunition Parks 

blackest night, you can hear the shrill toots of the locomotives carrying 
up supplies. Shells whimper overhead, searching for them, but the 
work goes on. 

The Nurses' Beauty Show 

THE Canadian hospitals stand out prominently in Allied Red 
Cross work. They have grown steadily ; large ones make for eco- 
nomy and efficiency of administration ; at one base there are several 
with a capacity of twenty-three hundred patients each. 

These represent the fruits of three years' experience Jof war's 
needs. They are models of advanced practicality. The huts are 
roomy and light. Some of the tents they use could be improved 
upon, yet they possess features that make them preferable to wooden 
construction in summer. 

In a single one of these Canadian hospitals they have evacuated 
more than eight thousand wounded and sick in a month. The 
deaths totaled only 1.48 per cent. Of course that was the most 
strenuous time they ever had ; during that same month three surgeons 
performed 1346 operations. 

Their system of registration holds a peculiar interest for us. 
By it they can follow the history of a patient's case from his arrival 
to the time he is sent back to the line or transferred to England. 



Page Nineteen 



F i g h t in ' Sons-of-Guns 



Every fact of importance is noted — nature of the wound or whatever 
the trouble may be ; date and place it was received ; date of his arrival 
at the base hospital from dressing station; and period he spent there. 
Nothing bearing on his case is overlooked, and a card index is kept 
of them all. The result is that you could walk into the registrar's 
office any time and obtain all necessary information about any 
wounded soldier who had been treated there. 

The system has more than a present value for reference. Wait 
until the applications for pensions begin pouring in, and then the 
Canadian Government will have accurate and incontestable data on 
every one. That is why their hospital registration is worthy of our 
study. You know what I mean. 

It is not a topic I am at liberty to dwell upon, but honor where 
honor is due — whoever chose the Canadian nurses had a good eye ! 
Now that means more to sick men than scoffers understand. Any 
time I get laid up at the Front I know where I want to be taken ; 
I even know the ward. 

Moreover, they are all thoroughly trained, qualified nurses. 
Eager young amateurs with nothing but romantic enthusiasm to 
recommend them don't get very far in the Canadian system. These 
young women know their work. They hold the rank of second 
lieutenant, wearing two stars on the shoulder straps as insignia. 
As such they are entitled to as prompt obedience from the soldiers 
as any other officers. 

The ambulance drivers who bring the wounded from the trains 
to the hospitals are also young women. A surgeon told me that 
they have men beaten a mile at this work — that they can ease the 
machines over any sort of ground with a gentleness that does wonders 
in preventing suffering. 

The Canadians take the same fine care of the horses that they 
take of the men. Last winter the animals suffered terribly. They 
had no shelter worth the name and stood in muck up to their knees 
far into the cold weather. Also, they were short of feed. Lack 
of transportation necessitated cutting down the ordinary rations 
just when they ought to have been increased. The result was that 
many died and the remainder came through in shocking condition. 
By spring they were mere skin and bone. 

But to-day they are " fat and sassy." Indeed, I doubt if the 
same horses would be in anything like as fine shape were they at 
home on the farms. They are not worked especially hard, and the 
slaughter among them is comparatively small — except when the 
army is putting on a show. Then, of course, there is no time to 
consider horseflesh. If they drop from exhaustion or are killed in 
hundreds on the roads — well, that is no more than the men around 
them are getting. 



Page Twenty 



F i g h t in' S o n s - of - G u n s 

It was a treat to see them in September. They will go into 
the winter well prepared for any rigors ; and the troubles of last 
year will not be repeated. There will be adequate shelters and 
plenty of oats and hay. The ration consists of ten pounds of grain 
and fifteen of hay, but that is often cut to seven and eight in the 
summer, when they can get green stuff. About the worst ailment 
to which they are subject is mange. 

The Passion for Sports 



'T"*HE men from the Dominion are wonders at making the best of 
-*- circumstances. You could set down a bunch of Canadians on a 
desert island and in two weeks they'd have a football team, and 
the secretary would be sending challenges broadcast to the cannibals 
of all the adjacent territory. And there would be a tug-of-war 
team in kilts, and a boxing bout between the lightweight champions 
of Winnipeg, Calgary, the Peace River Valley, Rouen and Havre; 
and a rival claimant who had beaten everything of his class in Sorel, 
Three Rivers, Lachine, Calais and Etaples. 

Sports are a passion with them. Every spare minute from duty 
is spent in some form of violent exercise behind the lines. They 
don't go in very strongly for games that necessitate the majority's 
being spectators ; everybody wants to take part. For this reason 
soccer football is a favorite. Any number can get in when there is 
space and they have enough pigskins ; and they kick the ball in all 
weathers. I have seen them at it within shelling distance of the 
Front when the rain was driving down. 

It is hardly necessary to point out the importance of amuse- 
ments in sustaining morale. That is one of the outstanding features 
of their superiority to Heine ; their rugged fitness and bulldog 
resolution draw deeply from the springs of sport. It helps them 
carry on through every trial and misery. 

For these reasons every encouragement is given to recreation, 
on the basis of leaving it to the men themselves to manage things as 
much as possible. They don't want to make participation in sports 
a duty, for its attraction would be immediately discounted. By 
affording facilities for every sort of healthy recreation the Canadian 
command accomplishes its object; the men do the rest. The 
quantity and kind of sports vary with the regiments. Some com- 
manders take a keener interest in it than others, and it is the same 
with the men. 

Concerts and motion pictures fill in many evenings for them 
out of the line. It is no uncommon thing to find on the program of a 
concert at the Front music-hall and dramatic talent that come under 




Page Twenty-One 



F i g h t i n ' Sons-of-Guns 



the head of " top-liners " at home. I heard a vaudeville show at a 
British base which easily put into the shade any average perform- 
ance you can see on the circuits in America. And the previous night 
the Canadians had had a concert in which the performers were 
ex-professionals whose salaries from their work used to be from a 
hundred to five hundred dollars a week. Now they're soldiers, at 
a dollar-ten a day. 

The green soldier who comes over gets surprises every minute. 
The most lasting is that he never sees the enemy. A Canadian 
captain who has been in France eighteen months and has been in 
action several times with his company, besides doing regular tours 
in the front trenches, told me that he had never set eyes on a Boche, 
except prisoners. Not that he hasn't been over the top, but when 
they reached the enemy trenches they were empty. 

It may be of comfort to the home folks to know that the heavy 
losses of earlier offensives are no longer countenanced. They 
leave it to the artillery to pave the way. 

" In the April offensive along the Aisne and the Moronvillers 
Crest the French fired day after day a daily average of over one 
million shells. . . . For the French portion of the attack in 
Flanders last July the density of the artillery concentration was the 
greatest in the world's history. In gigantic attacks this summer in 
Flanders, on the Aisne, on Moronvillers Crest and at Verdun whole 
regiments have captured their objectives without a single soldier 
being killed and only an insignificant number wounded. Barrages 
are now conducted with such a degree of perfection that during an 
artillery preparation for an attack the German front-line troops are 
cut off absolutely from all food supplies and all contact with the 



Insidious Propaganda 

INFANTRY don't run wildly forward in a charge ; they go at a 
sober walk. If they ran they would fall under their own barrage. 
So they advance at a steady pace, gaining objectives by the clock, 
and the barrage precedes them. Everything is timed to a second ; 
all the watches are synchronized. Sometimes they find the trenches 
still held by small bodies of the Boches who put up a fight, but usually 
they have either fallen back to another line or are eager to surrender 
after artillery straffing. I reiterate these oft-published facts here 
for the benefit of the men who are drilling at home. 

Perhaps there is no enemy the Boche hates worse than the 
Canadian. It has always seemed to his benighted mind that Canada 
had no business in this fight so far from home. He never dreamed 



Page Twenty-Two 



Fightin' Sons-of-Guns 



of the help she would give to Britain, and the rage he feels passes 
all bounds. They have thwarted him at every point of contact; 
they saved Calais at Ypres, 

Fear and envy are the wells of hate. And Heine hates the 
British ; but he loathes the Canadians with a peculiar, deadly loath- 
ing. He has often received orders to take no Canadian prisoners, 
unless some were specially desired for purposes of identifying the 
units, and therefore he has butchered whenever he could. 

The Canadian have experienced bitter fighting from the start. 
There has been no fiercer on any front. Indeed, the operations 
round Lens produced the meanest style of warfare that history ever 
saw. It was indescribable. 

The first thing the men in the trenches ask a visitor is for news 
of the war ! The explanation is simple. They're too close to the 
picture to see it. They know far more in Paris and London of 
what is happening at the Front than the soldiers who are fighting 
there. 

Often the men of a regiment are in ignorance of what their 
neighbors of another regiment are doing. 

What is happening in the United States ? How many troops 
have the Americans in France, and when will they take over a 
section of Front ? 

I found the Canadians woefully in the dark both as to our pre- 
parations and as to our spirit. From things dropped, it soon became 
apparent that some sort of insidious propaganda had been at work 
among them — the rank and file, I mean. They had heard rumors 
that the United States was lukewarm in the contest ; that it intended 
to train its armies only for preparation against possible future 
invasion and not to send them to the Western Front ; that our high 
command was convinced of the impossibility of breaking the German 
lines, except at a prohibitive cost. 

They will get enlightenment along those lines presently. But 
it is high time, since we are brothers-in-arms, that a lot of foolish 
prejudices they entertain were laid; just as it is high time we shed 
many childish provincial ideas of the British. 

The Canadian notion of us is still that of the old comic papers. 
Every American prefaces his conversation with " Wal, I reckon," of 
course — that is a well established fact in the Dominion, where, by 
the way, the prevailing speech and accent are precisely those of our 
New England or Middle West States, without their being aware of 
it. And we always brag ; we are mostly noise and bluster ! One 
of the stories going the rounds among the Canadians concerns a 
Yankee officer who was presented to the King. He remarked to His 
Majesty: "Wal, I reckon there'll be more Prussians in hell this 
time next year than it'll hold, sir." 



Page Twenty-Three 



F i g h t i n ' S o n s - of - G u n s 




Suffering saints ! That is so far from the American state of 
mind that it leaves a pang of regret — regret that we don't feel such 
confidence. The truth is that Americans to-day are too diffident 
about their capacity. I found that spirit even among the men in 
the camps. They realize what a terrific lot there is to learn, so 
behold them sitting humbly at the feet of any nationality which has 
seen war experience, glumly dubious of their own fitness for the 
emergency. 

Now that is not the brand of spirit which wins. Personally I 
would rather see them in the old cocksure mood; far rather hear 
them bragging that Uncle Sam could lick all creation with one hand 
tied behind his back and his eyes shut. For the Lord seems to 
take care of the cheerful ass who, in his ignorance, can see no 
reason why an impossible job cannot be done — and who goes 
blithely ahead and does it. 

The Canadians are all wrong about us, for a reaction has set in 
and we are cursed with modesty. 

Well as our neighbors have done, no American can visit their 
armies without coming away persuaded of this — that there is no 
reason on earth why we should not do the same, and on a propor- 
tionately larger scale. Fine as is their organization, we are capable 
of improving on it, for organization on a colossal scale is peculiarly 
a United States job. Splendid as their men are, we have their 
equals. They come from the same breed. The Canadians are like 
us in physique, in temperament, in speech, in ideals and in training. 

If we do our duty as well as Canada has done hers this war 
will be over next year. We have fifteen times the Dominion's 
population; we have fifty times her available present resources. 
Our duty, then, means delivering her punch magnified twentyfold 
at least. If we can get it over they'll hear the smash of the German 
power clear to Mars. 

" Remember, you're a better man than the Boche any day!" 

We would do well to keep that in mind. Canada never forgets 
it. Small she is, but lion-hearted. Her people have the virtues 
and the shortcomings of a rugged, virile race. Their English 
cousins have not yet learned to like the Canadian accent; but they 
admit they're fightin' sons-of-guns. 



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